The invention relates to a device to polymerize plastics to be hardened by ultraviolet (UV) irradiation.
Such devices have become known especially for the hardening of paints and inks on any surface. For this, discharge lamps are usually used that possess an emission spectrum including a more or less major component in the UV realm. Developments in this area tend toward increasing the UV component of these discharge lamps in order to be able to reduce the power requirement of the discharge lamps while maintaining the same UV output level. There has already been consideration of using laser irradiation in the UV spectrum for this hardening. Laser sources such as Excimer lasers, that have received consideration for this application because of their power output, are entirely too large and too expensive for this purpose.